No fewer than eight repentant Niger Delta militants and kidnappers undergoing rehabilitation in the Omega Power Ministries rehabilitation centre are now pastors, the General Overseer of the church, Apostle Chibuzor Chinyere, has said.

Chinyere said this in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Monday.

The General Overseer said the repentant militants turned a new leaf after a divine encounter through evangelism organised for some of them in their various camps.

He said, “I preached to them and many of them hearkened to salvation call and gave their lives to Jesus Christ.

“Before I embarked on this move, I bought some estates to relocate them. Initially, when I preached to them, because I could not relocate them out of their place, it was easy for them to go back to their old ways.

“So, I decided that the best way to approach them is to change their environment and that became the first step of their healing process.”

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The cleric said he took them to the estate, got them baptised and began to teach them the words of God.

“These kidnappers have wives and children, so what we did was to put their children in the free school operated by the church and at the same time established businesses for their wives.

“We started teaching them different skills and by the grace of God, after they acquired the skills, some said they wanted to be pastors.

“And, currently we have eight of them that are full-time pastors in OPM branches.

“Others are into different skills like carpentry, pipeline welding, scaffolding,  and mechanic,” Chinyere said.

According to him, about 10,000 youths have been rehabilitated and reintegrated into society under the OPM rehabilitation programme for youths especially for repentant militants and commercial sex workers.